


cast your green mantle over me

by MsLullabies



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Mandalorian Culture, Not Beta Read, Pre-Series, Protectiveness, also written in like 10 minutes bc i had a need ok, i also have a need for em dashes i'm sorry, mention of land mines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21740914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsLullabies/pseuds/MsLullabies
Summary: An injury leads to a reluctant request for help.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 177





	cast your green mantle over me

He was lucky - lucky to have survived, extremely lucky that there was a covert on the neighboring planet and that they would receive him, and impossibly, miraculously lucky there was an elder in that covert - but he didn't feel lucky, not with the back of his head split open, and his stomach still churning with both concussion and unease.

He made his way to the elder's apartment, and found her waiting for him with her med kit out - her armorer had already informed her of Dyn's need.

"Elder," he said and bowed his head.

"Mother," she corrected, and then, "You're on the hunt?" It was only barely a question.

"Yes." 

She nodded in acknowledgment.

"The bacta I had isn't working," he said, gesturing at the back of his head and feeling sheepish, like he was making excuses. It was humiliating to need this kind of special favor, and ungracious to ask so much of a tribe not his own.

But the elder just nodded again, still nothing but acknowledgement in the movement, and gestured to him to remove his helmet. 

Dyn's fingers touched the metal over his temples, and though this was already decided, he hesitated. He was suddenly, keenly aware of the elder's breathing, the almost silent rustle of her clothes beneath her light armor, the creak of the leather of her blaster belt, the hundred little not-sounds of her presence. This was permitted in front of long lived and long trusted kin, who had kept the way for the whole of their lives. But such elders were so rare that Dyn had never expected to meet one. Despite the necessity and the allowance, he still swallowed a hard sense of wrongness as he lifted his helmet away. 

He set it on her table and turned around so that she could examine his injury. That meant he was facing the door bareheaded. He'd rather have shown his belly to an albek. 

The elder understood his discomfort without anything being spoken, and her hands were quick. _This is permitted,_ Dyn told himself firmly. She was mother to this tribe, she knew the way and had kept it longer than he would likely live.

"There is shrapnel in this wound still," she pronounced. "Be glad the bacta did not work, and close your skin over it."

Her hands dropped from his head for only a moment before returning with a tool of some kind. The burning sting of the wound intensified as she plucked debris from the gash. 

"There is hardly a mark on your helmet," she commented, asking without asking. 

"My heel caught the edge of a landmine," Dyn explained. "The shrapnel got up under the edge."

"Mm." Her fingers brushed his collar, over the places where the expired bacta had been enough and had closed the shallower scrapes. "Move with the explosion next time, ad'ika," she admonished, with a note of teasing in her voice.

"Yes, mother," he murmured.

She finished cleaning the gash and applied a thin, fresh bacta strip, tapping the pauldron on his shoulder to indicate when she was done. His ribs creaked as he turned to thank her. She must have heard the sound or seen something in the way he moved. 

"Do you need assistance wrapping those?" she asked. Her voice was not disapproving, not exactly. But it wouldn't be right to have help with that, not when he could do it himself in privacy. She knew this, and knew he would say no, but she had offered anyway.

"No, I'll -" He was interrupted by a series of small sounds - a sudden footfall at the door, the whoosh of the door opening. A single pounding beat of his own heart in his ears. And the almost silent rush of the elder's cloak moving through the air, as she seized its edge in her hand and threw her arm up and around him faster than he could move, covering his head where he was exposed.

"Get out," she said, before the person at the door could say anything. She was not angry, she spoke with flat and assured authority. Dyn kept still, veiled from sight, and let himself breathe against the armor over her bicep as the interloper retreated. With that unyielding calm in his ears, with pain freshly tended to, he thought he could almost smell the dusty air of the foundlings' training yard. The elder's hand held the crown of his head, distinctly not the weight of his helmet, but it eased the twist of his stomach none the less. 

He shook himself free of the echoes of memory and groped behind him for his helmet; put it back on and lifted his head, armored once more. The elder lowered her arm and cloak and turned to put her med kit away. Whoever had been at the door was gone.

Excuses piled up in Dyn's throat - he was concussed, he was not normally so slow, or forgetful about locking doors, he had been vigilant in every other moment, for every other injury - and he swallowed them all. Sometimes a blaster misfires, and a blaster does not care about your excuses or how careful you were the thousand times before. The elder's protection was a piece of grace and good luck, just like his finding by his tribe had been all those years ago - it could not be deserved or repaid.

"Thank you," he said stiffly, and regardless.

Again she nodded, in acknowledgment only. He was not actually a little foundling anymore, and she did not need to admonish him.

He ducked out of her door, and turned his boots toward his ship.

**Author's Note:**

> \- this is my first time ever posting to ao3 from a mobile device of any kind, please be gentle and forgive  
> \- I vaguely remember something about bacta having expiration dates and being less effective after expiring from one of the 30 or so eu books I read 20 years ago  
> \- title is from Tam Lin


End file.
